The father of the agender teen whose skirt was lit on fire aboard an AC Transit bus last week has just penned a sweet open letter to his community and colleagues at Sequoia Elementary School, where he teaches kindergarten. Karl Fleischman says that his son, Luke "Sasha" Fleischman is doing well in a "a terrific burn center in San Francisco," and he thanks everyone for donating to the fundraising campaign to aid with medical expenses.
Curiously, Fleischman isn't calling what happened a hate crime because a court has not reached that conclusion, though 16-year-old Richard Thomas has been charged with a hate crime, and will be in court on Friday. (And according to a probable cause declaration already filed, Thomas told the interviewing officer after his arrest that he attacked Fleischman out of homophobia.) Still, he says he "choose[s] to assume [for now] that this kid was playing with fire, and that he gravely underestimated the consequences of that." True to his teacher self, he encourages other teachers to turn the story into a lesson for younger children about fire safety.
He also tries to address the fact of Sasha's gender-non-conforming identity, how he supports it, and how to discuss it with children.
The fact is that Sasha self-identifies as "agender" and prefers the pronouns "they," "them," and "their" when people refer to Sasha in the third person. (English doesn't have commonly used gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns yet.) Being agender simply means that the person doesn't feel that they are "either a boy or a girl." I realize that this is a concept that even adults have difficulty wrapping their heads around. (My wife and I frequently slip up in our pronoun usage, much to Sasha's chagrin!) So I can't pretend that it's an issue that all young children will grasp. But what they certainly can and should understand is that different people like different things. Different people dress or behave or look differently. And that's a good thing. Sasha feels comfortable wearing a skirt. It's part of their style. They also frequently sport a necktie and vest. Sasha likes the look, and frankly, so do I. It makes me smile to see Sasha being Sasha.
Anyway, this story gets us all choked up. And we're glad Sasha's doing okay and sad that he'll have to go through a long and painful recovery after an incident that, pretty clearly, was motivated by hate and ignorance. And even though this statement may offend Sasha's sensibilities, we have to say he had balls for wearing a skirt every day on public transportation and never giving a fuck. We hope he continues to do so.
